Energy shield

“ In short, all forms of electric batteries would stop sending currents of electricity out through their wires, and everything depending upon batteries would stop running.
A fire gives out heat and light; both are kinds of energy. And it is the electric energy caused by the chemical change in batteries that runs submarines, electric automobiles, flashlights, and doorbells. Since burning (oxidation) is simply a form of chemical change, it is not difficult to realize that chemical change releases energy. ”

“ President, while my department has finally found a way to convert matter directly into energy, I believe that any use of this process would be disastrous. First, there is absolutely no safeguard that could prevent a matter-conversion powered machine, used for peaceful purposes, from being changed into a lethal weapon by the simplest of alterations. ”

“ Morey objected, “the vacuum that keeps out the gas will also keep out heat, as well! Since our generator is to run on heat energy, it will be rather chilly inside if we don't remedy that. Of course, our power units could be placed outside, where the blast of air will warm them, but we really won't have a very good streamline effect if we hang a big electric generator outside.” ”

“ For warming buildings, the furnace would become an electric generator, from which wires, instead of pipes for steam or hot air, would lead to the rooms to be heated, when, by interposing a suitable resistance, the energy of the current would be converted into heat. The probability of being able to convert the energy due to combustion of fuel into electric instead of heat energy may be very small ”

“ In other words, one out of every five homes is powered -- receives its electricity from nuclear power. And the President is concerned, as he looks at the energy situation broadly, that we need to have a comprehensive policy that uses natural gas, that uses clean coal, that stresses conservation, that uses nuclear power, as well. ”

“ With transmitters of this kind we are enabled to project electrical energy in any amount to any distance and apply it for innumerable purposes, both in peace and war. Through the universal adoption of this system, ideal conditions for the maintenance of law and order will be realized, for then the energy necessary to the enforcement of right and justice will be normally productive, yet potential, and in any moment available, for attack and defense. ”

“ What is the longest mission where the total weight of the fuel cell will be less than the weight of the nuclear power plant?
26 SOLAR CELLS Photons as Energy Carriers
All our fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, owe their existence to the solar energy stream that has engulfed the earth for billions of years. The power in this stream amounts to about 1400 watts per square meter at the earth, nearly enough to supply an average home if all the energy were converted to electricity. The problem is to get the sun’s rays to yield up their energy with high efficiency. ”

“ The chemical energy of coal and other fuels cannot be directly converted into electric energy. For power producing purposes, the chemical energy of a fuel is first converted into heat by combustion, and the heat thus obtained converted into mechanical energy by some form of heat engine, and the mechanical energy subsequently transformed into electric energy in an electric generator.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is the law known as the conservation of energy which has been built up by Helmholtz, Thomson, Joule and others. ”

“ If the immense electrical energy in the interior of the atom can ever be liberated and controlled, then our steadily decreasing coal supply will no longer be the bugbear it now is to all thoughtful men.
The stored-up energy of the great coal-fields can be used up, but we cannot replace it or create fresh supplies. As we have seen, energy cannot be destroyed, but it can become unavailable. ”

“ Under the head of fuel he includes not only wood, coal, but also all forms of matter that may be used or burnt up by heat, or dissolved by chemical agencies. Thus zinc and lead, which are used in batteries, are merely forms of fuel. That potential energy resides in such things as wood and coal is a matter of common experience. All our coal-fields are stores of energy, which received their energy when in plant form, ages ago, from the sun, and this energy is now being used to drive our machinery, to warm our houses, and to give light to our homes and our cities. ”

“ The old-fashioned, oil- or coal-burning power plants converted chemical energy into heat energy, converted that into kinetic energy, and that, in turn was converted into electrical energy. The heavy-metal atomic plant does almost the same thing, except that it uses nuclear reactions instead of chemical reactions to produce the heat. The stellarator is a converter, too.
"About the only exception I can think of is the electrostatic condenser, and you could say that it converts static electricity into a current flow if you wanted to stretch a point. ”

“ How vast and yet easily controlled a power this would be in the hands of those who were able to wield it, may be guessed from the fact that, in the present day, less than ten per cent. of the latent energy of coal is developed as electrical power even in the most perfect systems of conversion. ”

“ We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power. (Applause.) We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. ”

“ The apparatus will be one of specifically great power, but only a few individuals will be required to operate it. This evolution will bring more and more into prominence a machine or mechanism with the fewest individuals as an element of warfare, and the absolutely unavoidable consequence of this will be the abandonment of large, clumsy, slowly moving, and unmanageable units. Greatest possible speed and maximum rate of energy-delivery by the war apparatus will be the main object. ”

“ It now seems to me that to burn coal, however efficiently, in a battery would be a mere makeshift, a phase in the evolution toward something much more perfect. After all, in generating electricity in this manner, we should be destroying material, and this would be a barbarous process. We ought to be able to obtain the energy we need without consumption of material. But I am far from underrating the value of such an efficient method of burning fuel. At the present time most motive power comes from coal, and, either directly or by its products, it adds vastly to human energy. ”

“ We may, therefore, expect to see hydrogen and oxygen take an important place in ordinary usages. From the standpoint alone of preservation of fuel, that is to say, of potential energy upon the earth, this new conquest of electricity is very pleasing. Waterfalls furnish utilizable energy in every locality, and, in the future, will perhaps console our great-grandchildren for the unsparing waste that we are making of coal.—La Nature. ”

“ Electricity in motion is transmuted into heat during the passage of a current along a thin wire, or any badly conducting substance—the wire is heated in consequence, and may even become white hot. Most frequently the energy of an electric current is spent in heating the wires and other materials that form the circuit. Now, the energy of such a current is fed by the burning or oxidation of the metal (generally zinc) which is used in the circuit, so that the ultimate effect of this combustion is the heating of the various wires and other materials through which the current passes. ”

“ It had been used as a fuel in an industrial plant, till it had been about half annihilated, and now it was in that curious, borderline condition, when it had a tremendous tendency to absorb energy and become matter again, and an equally tremendous tendency to release its energy and become free energy as light or heat. The conditions determined one or the other, and the new Minus Force shells were used under conditions of space that made them exert a tremendous tendency to become matter. Billions of billions of ergs of energy they could absorb, and would absorb. ”

“ Recent experience, gained by repeated experiments with costly apparatus, has resulted in not only proving the Davy and some other descriptions of lamps to be unsafe, but some of our Government Inspectors and our most experienced mining engineers go so far as to say that "no lamp in a strong current of explosive gas is safe unless protected by a tin shield." ”

“ Most of the impetus for developing the fuel cell as a practical device comes from the space program. The cell has admirable properties for space missions that are less than a few months in duration. It is a clean, quiet, vibrationless source of energy. Like the battery it has a high electrical overload capacity for supplying power peaks and is easily controlled. ”

“ When we burn it, we let the carbon go off up the chimney, but the heat energy we keep as completely as possible, and by means of a boiler transform it into the expansive energy of steam, which is converted into the motion energy of piston rod and wheel, and when connected with a dynamo may become electrical energy. The electrical energy we can conduct by a wire into our homes and there convert it into the light energy of an incandescent bulb, the heat energy of an electric griddle, or the motion energy of a fan or carpet sweeper. ”

“ Shot off in small quantities in cannon-like tubes of specially prepared steel, it was used to set great dynamos into action, and consequently to furnish the larger part of the electricity indispensable to life. It was the energy of Mulflar, passed into storage batteries, that made it possible to run those little coaster-like cars with which I had had such a frightening experience; it was the energy of Mulflar that kept the lights and the ventilation in operation, that ran the food and clothing factories, and that pumped fresh water into pipes throughout the length and depth of the land. ”

“ The advent of the alternating-current system of electric power-transmission marks an epoch in the economy of energy available to man from coal. Evidently all electrical energy obtained from a waterfall, saving so much fuel, is a net gain to mankind, which is all the more effective as it is secured with little expenditure of human effort, and as this most perfect of all known methods of deriving energy from the sun contributes in many ways to the advancement of civilization. But electricity enables us also to get from coal much more energy than was practicable in the old ways. ”

“ In the past, many disastrous oil-field conflagrations have been due solely to the use of open-fired engines in close proximity to the wells, but with the use of electrical energy this fire danger will be rapidly removed. ”

“ Finally, however, I had the satisfaction of accomplishing the task undertaken by the use of a new principle, the virtue of which is based on the marvelous properties of the electrical condenser. One of these is that it can discharge or explode its stored energy in an inconceivably short time. Owing to this it is unequaled in explosive violence. The explosion of dynamite is only the breath of a consumptive compared with its discharge. It is the means of producing the strongest current, the highest electrical pressure, the greatest commotion in the medium. ”

“ As to the energy supply in small isolated places as dwellings, I have placed my confidence in the development of a light storage battery, involving the use of chemicals manufactured by cheap water power, such as some carbide or oxygen-hydrogen cell.
But we shall not satisfy ourselves simply with improving steam and explosive engines or inventing new batteries; we have something much better to work for, a greater task to fulfill. ”

“ If you vigorously knead a lemon to free the juices and then stick a strip of zinc in one end and a copper strip in the other, you can measure a voltage across the strips. Electrons will flow through the load without the inconvenience of having to supply heat. You have made yourself a chemical battery.
The chemical battery was the first direct conversion device. Two hundred years ago it was the scientists’ only continuous source of electricity.
Since the chemical battery does not need heat for its operation, it is logical to ask what makes the current flow. Where does the energy come from? ”

“ The coils were charged, and the energy stored. Their energy could be pumped into the big coil, and then, when the ship slowed to normal space, could be pumped back to them. The pumping energy, as well as any further energy needed for recharging the coils could be supplied by three huge power generators.
"These energy-producers," Morey explained, "work on a principle known for hundreds of years on Earth. Lead, when reduced to a temperature approaching absolute zero as closely as, for instance, liquid helium, has no electrical resistance. ”

“ Further, when the projector arrived to produce similar effects with less demand upon infantry personnel, and less dependence on the wind, the whole tone of the army towards gas was changed, and it became almost popular.
The peculiarity of cloud gas attack was the concentration of all this effort of preparation within a few days. In terms of military efficiency, the amount of energy expended was fully justified by the casualties produced. ”